Deadline

“I want to know about your father’s suicide.”

Chapter 11

For several seconds she was too stunned to move, then she bolted from her chair and marched across the room. He caught her just as she stepped onto the bottom stair. Hooking her upper arm with his hand, he brought her around to face him.

“Let go of me!”

“Calm down.”

“Go to hell!”

“Keep your voice down. You’ll wake up the boys.”

“You bet I’ll wake up the boys.” She jerked her arm free. “I’m taking my sons and getting far away from you, and I don’t care if we have to wade to Savannah tonight!”

She shoved his chest and pushed herself out of his grip, then turned and started up the stairs. But on the third one, her socks caused her to slip. She fell forward, catching herself on the step above her, but knocking one knee hard against the edge of the tread. She clasped her knee and sat down on the step, rocking in pain.

“Dammit! Are you okay?”

He sat down on the step beneath her, bringing his face level with hers. His concern looked genuine, which only made her more furious. She placed her elbows on her knees and lowered her face to her hands. “Get away from me.”

He didn’t, of course. He just sat there, silent and unmoving, for as long as she did. Finally, when she had composed herself, she lowered her hands and wiped her tear-dampened palms on the legs of her pajamas. Looking anywhere except at him, she noticed the overturned tumbler in front of the chair where she’d been sitting.

“I dropped my glass. The bourbon spilled.”

“Who gives a fuck?”

The vulgarity was unexpected, and she realized immediately that he’d used it intentionally to shock her out of her anger. It worked. She laughed, or choked out a laugh.

He motioned toward her knee. “I’ll be happy to kiss it and make it w

ell.”

His genial smile completely defused her anger. She gave another involuntary laugh, then shook her head with chagrin. “Ah, Dawson.”

“What?”

“I didn’t want to like you.”

“Then we’re even. I didn’t want to like you, either.” The admission surprised her, and it must have shown. Leaning back, he rested his elbows on the step on which she sat and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “I resented this story being thrust on me.”

“Was it thrust?”

“Yes. In the sense that I couldn’t say no.”

“Why?”

He closed one eye in a grimace. “That’s complicated.” He didn’t divulge why.

Absently she rubbed her sore knee. “From a layman’s standpoint, Jeremy’s story has a lot of intriguing elements. Why weren’t you interested?”

He stared at a spot in the distance for a long time, and when he answered, it was in a soft voice. “I saw guys blown to bits. Saw men risking their lives to save a wounded buddy whose odds of making it were nonexistent. Watched men and women putting themselves in harm’s way to save a stranger. A hostile, even.

“Having witnessed incredible acts of bravery, I was disgusted by a decorated Marine who came home after surviving all that and then let his life—a damn good life, it seemed to me—go into the sewer. I didn’t know Jeremy Wesson, but I didn’t like him. Still don’t.” He looked at her then. “But I can relate to him. And that’s what really disgusts me.”

“The post-traumatic stress?”

He raised his shoulders in a small shrug.